Sunil Sethi: Buddhadeb is no Gorbachev or Deng

AL FRESCO

Champions of the oppressed, protectors of peasants' rights and the fount of proletarian rule "" all those old tags, however cliched, had a powerful social and political validity in Bengal, for how else could a Communist government have been elected and re-elected for 30 years? There was so much that was admirable, from effective implementation of land reforms to an unblemished record in communal relations. Above all, there was the remarkably smooth transition of leadership, when the great commissar Jyoti Basu passed on the mantle to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the poet-politician in touch with changing times. His promise of introducing fresh capital, changing the work ethic and curtailing the vice-like grip of bureaucracy and party cadres spelt vigour, an Indian version of China's dynamic economy. Even sections of the anti-CPM press portrayed the new chief minister as the Gorbachev of Bengal. Most Bengalis and many Indians believed in his vision. Comrade Deng's axiom of who cares whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice was bound to revive Bengal's lagging fortunes.

Why and how has it gone so horribly wrong? The proposed acquisition of farmers' land for industry in Singur and Nandigram, the agitation and killings it triggered in the spring, followed by the stink over the death of Rizwanur Rehman in Kolkata, and now the grim chronicle of murder, rape and pillage by CPM cadres in the "recapture" of Nandigram, show up the dark underside of Communist credo: crushing dissent and winning turf wars with brute force.

It also exposes Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as the uncompromising apparatchik he says he is. At an encounter with journalists two days ago he contemptuously dismissed an uncomfortable question from a reporter, saying that he wouldn't dirty his hands by killing a rodent "" the arrogant implication being that anyone else in his place would have shut down the paper.

The CPM government sees a Maoist conspiracy in Nandigram (where the rest of the country sees homeless and brutalised men, women and children, the majority of them Muslim, bundled into refugee camps) and dismisses a peaceful march by intellectuals from College Street to Esplanade as an indiscretion by Kolkata's bourgeoisie. That thousands of the city's students, teachers and activists should join writers like Mahashweta Devi, filmmakers like Aparna Sen and artists like Jogen Choudhury to register a silent protest against the atrocities in Nandigram must be a personal acute embarrassment for the chief minister, whose company he likes to keep as an avowed intellectual. Some of these figures, whose contribution to the intellectual life of the country is matched by their integrity, were till not long ago sympathisers, even vocal supporters, of the Buddhadeb-led government. But today Kolkata stands more sharply polarised than before.

And to what extent have the turf wars and waves of violence accompanying the debate over industrialisation versus farmers' land rights polarised the countryside? Bengal's peasantry has a longer history of political engagement than in many other parts of the country so the chickens are coming home to roost for the Communists. An ideology that, through decades of land reform and grassroots organisation, has made peasants conscious of their rights, can only execute sharp U-turns at its own peril. The reformist zeal, though, has also been skewed. Land reform has not created jobs; unemployment has steadily grown and so has migration of skilled labour. The record in education, in both rural and urban areas, has been poor. Every now and then a controversy, fuelled by chauvinists, erupts over whether Bengali should be the sole medium of instruction rather than a bilingual system.

The greatest disappointment is that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, heralded as the shining new leader to usher Bengal into the new century, is no reformer. He had both the time and opportunity to negotiate a peaceful settlement at Nandigram since trouble erupted in March. He could have opened up the debate on industrialisation to carry along a spectrum of public opinion. But Buddhadeb, it turns out, is not Comrade Gorbachev, and certainly not Comrade Deng.